Defending the Libyan Intervention

    In the past few days there has been a lot of opinions voice about the NATO interventions in Libya. As usual the so called eastern bloc (China and Russia) including India  is against it. There are many who say that what happened in Iraq will be repeated in Libya. The anti-interventionists always cite the age old theme of sovereign rights of nations to do act as they please inside their countries to defend their stand.

However a closer look at history will reveal the double standards of the eastern bloc as well as justify the actions take by the west especially Britain and France.

 The non- interventionist have interfered militarily whenever their intrests were at stake in their neighboring countries.For eg: Russia in Afghanistan, Georgia etc; China in Korea, Vietnam etc, and even India in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Applying the same reason France and other European nations have all right to interfere in their neighboring country.

The Europeans are intimately affected by what happens in the middle east and Mediterranean. They have been invaded multiple time in the past 1400 years from that area. The crusades were primarily a humanitarian intervention to help Christians in the middle east

As with everything else the European interventions have caused more harm than good in several places. Only history will tell the after effects of this intervention. However the stories coming from Libya presently show that France and Great Britain may have finally interfered in the right country.

The Menace in Modern Governments

 Most of us probably hold the view that despite the corruption and inefficiencies plaguing modern governments, we at least have a democratic government answerable to the people at some point rather than the despotic monarchies of earlier days. However a closer look at the role of modern governments in our day today lifes will paint a less rosier picture. 

  While it is true that many monarchial governments in earlier days were repressive, despotic and didn't care what people thought, they had one interesting feature. Their involvement in the citizens personal life was limited. For eg they did not generally  force their will on citizens in the following areas.

1) Specifying the size of families
2) The persons freedom on what he should do with his land or money.
3) Report the total income they made by their own effort.

  The Democratic governments of today force (directly or implicitly) its citizens to follow its directives on all the things listed above and more. Also they have no problem in committing most of the repressive actions that are being accused on the Monarchical governments like:

1) Forcible detention of a citizen for any reason.
2) Censoring newspapers and media.
3) Forcible displacement of citizens from their property.

 A reasonable and fair analysis of today's democratic governments with monarchical governments can no doubt show that we have traded away some of our important personal freedoms for an illusion of representation in the halls of power.

Note: The term monarchical governments  does not include military dictatorships or constitutional monarchies.